Discode 1.2.3

Looking for the next big thrill and challenge in her life, Kyouka discovers herself a girl that's more than she seems.

What They SayGoing through life is hard enough for a coed at her sexual peak in an academy full of horny boys, but it's even harder when she's got horny boy parts of her own. Miss Futaba finds it hard to sit quietly in class when something down there keeps her too distracted to think straight. Day in and day out, she's waiting for the classes to end so she can run off and relieve her pent-up desires. When a few others find out about her secret, her sex life explodes into new heights as every possibility is put into practice.

The Review!Audio:Kitty Media continues to dub their adult titles and Discode 123 is no exception as it has a pair of stereo tracks encoded at 192kbps. Like most hentai shows, there isn't much to really offer here outside if the straightforward and solid presentation that lacks anything to make it stand out. It's quite good at what it does, letting the characters move and act in their environments with a bit of minor directionality at times but it doesn't stand out much more than that. It doesn't leave you wanting though and the presentation for both language tracks is clean and clear.

Video:Originally released in 2005, the transfer for this OVA series is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. The show is a short one with each of the episodes running just about twenty minutes, so the three fill out the sixty minute run tie easily. Discode has a good look to it with some very good character designs and animation which is encoded well. Colors are rich and vibrant where appropriate and backgrounds hold up well with very little noise. There are hints of some edge cross coloration in a few of the characters, generally with some of the school uniforms, but overall it's a decent looking release that works well for the show.

Packaging: Discode uses the original Japanese artwork here with a full length shot of two of the girls in a nondescript room with both of them covered in fluid. It's an alright looking cover which does push a particular style that's accurate to the show, though it reverses the nature of the characters a bit with what their personalities are actually like. The back cover uses just animation pieces for its design with a full sized piece of Kyouka with a number of shots of Futaba in photograph form spread out across the back. The summary is a bit lengthier than normal and covers a decent bit of the show without giving away too much. The rest has the usual with the minor production credits and a clean simple technical grid.

Menu:The menu design is fairly standard Kitty style in that it uses the cover artwork, or at least zoomed portions of it, as the main static background. The artwork looks better here, more detailed and with richer colors, and gives a more appreciative view of the material in comparison to the cover itself. Navigation is simple and easy with only a few submenus to work with. The language submenu has the three different selections and unfortunately defaults to English with no sign/song subtitles instead of reading the players presets.

Extras:None.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)One thing I make sure to do when watching hentai releases is that other than the front cover artwork, I do my best to not know much about the show itself. There's something to be said for the element of surprise as even just simple cover artwork can be quite deceptive as to the actual content of the show. And with some summaries on the back covers giving away entire plots, it's safer to avoid those entirely anyway. Generally this has worked out well but sometimes you get a surprise that sort of pokes you in the eye, like futanari.

Discode is an interesting three part story, told in twenty minute episode increments, where it works through the timeline in a way that makes for some enjoyment. Initially, the story centers around a student named Futaba who has a real problem a she's equipped both as a boy and a girl. She definitely leans as a she, but there are many uncontrollable urges she has to deal with in regards to her male side. That causes a number of problems, from phys ed classes to a need to deal with the urges as they hit. That dealing is making it harder to hide the secret as she's leaving a trail of evidence all over the place, including the girls bathroom.

Just as her secret is about to be revealed to everyone, the new transfer student steps in. Kyouka has come here recently and is gaining quite a following because of her flirtatious nature and strong personality that draws others to her. And Kyouka knows Futaba's secret and it's exactly the kind of unusual circumstance and challenge she's been looking for. The first episode deals with introducing the situation that Futaba is living through and how Kyouka manipulates things to her advantage pretty well in just under twenty minutes.

Kyouka's background story isn't a bad one as we see her looking for thrills and challenges that she requires in order to feel alive. She abuses not only her student body but the bodies of many other students in this quest, which explains why she uses so many to manipulate and work over Futaba when she decides what she wants. Having the second episode go backwards to focus solely on Kyouka is rather well done, though disconcerting at first, but the end result is that we really do get a better understanding of her motivations and why she's doing everything to Futaba that she is.

The visual design of Discode is pretty nice with some very appealing character designs to it. They're all distinct here with no real overlap among any of them, and it's kept mostly to just Kyouka and Futaba when it comes to the lead female characters. The men tend to be less defined, more pawns and tools than anything else, The sex scenes play pretty intensely, and because of the particular fetish used here, they get to play with things differently by having Futaba learning more about how her body functions and the different things she can do with it with others. And they actually have some fun with it by dealing with how a potential boyfriend would cope with it and with how Kyouka takes advantage of it with her vivid imagination.

In Summary:Discode is the kind of title where you may want to turn away but can't because it lets you go down a path not often taken, especially if you weren't all that sure of the material that was going to be used here. The show has some really strong moments of exploration, both physically and intellectually, but it doesn't explore them as in-depth as it could or should. Discode is a title that I know I liked on different levels, but one that's very hard to recommend unless you like the futanari genre and that of characters being dominated hard. There's a lot to like here but it's definitely more for those who have particular interests rather than a casual buyer looking for something hot.